


Harm

by TheSigyn



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Emotional, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 00:39:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4079968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tell me about her,” Harmony said. “I know you’re never gonna love me. But I don’t think anyone’s going to. Not the way you love her. I just wanna taste it. Even if it’s not mine, I wanna taste it.” Spike tries, for one night, to drown his sorrows in Harmony.  Set at the end of Harm’s Way, Angel, season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harm

  
    “Last call.”

   Spike rolled his eyes. “Isn’t last call supposed to be in another three hours?” 

   “Not a demon bar,” Harmony said. “Two AM, off we’re s’posed to pop.” 

   Spike tapped his glass and drained it quick once the bartender had filled it. “Suppose I should find a spot to hang my hat,” he said. “I think I spotted a warehouse or two down by the docks.” He tossed the last of his money down on the bar and stood himself up.  

   “You could...” Harmony stopped.

    “What?” he asked.

    “You could always come home with me.”

    Spike’s manner turned from cold and dedicated drunkard to half seductive player almost instantly. “Oh, really?”

    Harmony thought about it. She knew he didn’t love her. She knew he took her for granted. She knew he could be cruel to her – even murderous. And he made her feel too good to care. “Yeah.” She stood up. “Really.”  
    

***

    Spike was an excellent lover. He threw himself into the act whole heartedly, his passionate nature and a hundred years of practice translating into some of the most intense sexual experiences Harmony had ever savored. He had her against the wall before they’d even gotten all the way inside her apartment, stripped her clothes off and carried her to the bed as she gasped with delight. He swept over her receptive body with a hunger and desperation that made her want to be his willing victim. He knew how to play her body like a master violinist. Even though he barely kissed her. Even though she had to endure the fact that he kept his eyes closed the whole time. That the first thing he said to her in bed – what he always told her every time she spoke – was to shut up.

    What surprised her this time was that he stayed above her, holding her for long moments after he came. He’d gotten her off twice, the first time just by how hard he’d entered her, the second toward the end, with the long, slow thrusts he built afterwards. Even when they’d first started sleeping together, his usual MO was to roll off and start snoring, if not walk off entirely. But this time he stayed there, his head buried in her hair, her pillow, and it took her a long moment to realize why. He wasn’t savoring her.

    Spike was crying.

    She’d always known he was sensitive, but he’d never done that around her before. He was keeping as still as he could in the hopes, she realized, that she wouldn’t notice. “Spike,” she whispered, running her hand over his bleached hair.

    He rolled off, trying to gasp away the traces in the dark, but she was a vampire – she could see in the dark. It was clear he’d been crying. “Blondie bear, it’s okay,” she said.

    “Shut up,” he muttered, though completely without venom. “Don’t call me that.”

    She could tell he was about to get up, go to her kitchen, probably start watching TV and fall asleep on her couch. She rolled over and held him down. “I’m not stupid,” she said to him. “I’m not smart, but I’m not stupid. I know you weren’t making love to _me_.”

    She half expected him to get angry and shout at her. She thought they’d have a screaming match, then, and she could try to hurt him – the demon in her thought hurting him might be funny. The other half thought he’d get vengeful, and hold her down in the snarling semi-rape that always fired her, that he’d used to inflict upon her when he was still getting over that Dorkus bitch. Either way, excitement in vampire romance.

    Instead all he did was sag back against the pillows with a sigh and – to her shock – put his arm around her. “‘S’not your fault, Harm,” he said low. His tears had faded to a world-weary exhaustion that made something hum in her. “You’re a good bird. For a soulless psychopathic serial killer,” he amended.

    “Killing humans is an expensive hobby,” Harmony said ruefully. “LA’s a lot harder to live in than Sunnydale. I need my paycheck.” She frowned. “Took me a while to get off it when company policy changed, though.”

    “Yeah, you can jones pretty hard for human blood at first,” Spike said. “You get used to not killing humans after a while.”

    “Oh, I can still kill them,” Harmony said lightly. “I just have to be really careful, and I can’t eat any.”

    Spike laughed, completely without humor. “Oh, god,” he muttered, with a strong hint of disapproval. “And I haven’t a right to say a bloody thing.”

    Harmony lifted her head and looked at him. Even chipped up, he’d at least appreciated her blood lust. This was different. “So you really did get a _soul_ , then. It’s not that stupid chip thingy.”

    “Chip’s gone,” Spike said. “It’s all down to a conscience.”

    “Sounds awful.”

    “It is,” he said honestly. Then his voice got quiet. “Wouldn’t trade it, though.”

    “Why not?”

    He shook his head. “You couldn’t possibly begin to understand,” he said.

    Ordinarily she would have assumed he was calling her stupid, but she sensed it was something else. “Why’d you do it in the first place?” she asked. “I know Angel was cursed. I mean, that makes sense to me. But they say you got yours on your own. Why do that to yourself?”

    He was silent for a long moment. “It was for her,” he said quietly.

    “Your slayer.”

    “Yeah.”

    “I wouldn’t have dared ask that of you. Sounds like a nasty bitch.”

    “She didn’t ask me,” Spike said. “I did it. To... be worthy of her.”

    Harmony shook her head. “I know you’re all obsessed about her and stuff, but what’s so great about Buffy? I mean, she was so weird in high school. She wasn’t popular at all.”

    “And that’s so important?”

    “It’s the _only_ thing that’s important.”

    Spike chuckled. “You’re still _in_ high school, Harm. That’s what dying means.”

    “But... what’s so great about her? I mean, I thought you hated her, and then you got all weird about her, then you claim you love her to the point you went and tortured yourself, and now you’re not gonna go after her. I mean, that’s just nuts. I don’t care how much I loved a guy, I wouldn’t give up killing for him, I mean, that’s insane. And I wouldn’t let anything scare me into staying away. I mean – unless I knew he didn’t really love me or anything,” she added darkly. “And hurt me and lied to me and took me for granted.”

    Spike glanced down at her. “I don’t mean to hurt you, Harm,” he said.

    “Why not? Is that the soul again?”

    “Unfortunately, yes,” he admitted.

    She stared at him. “You don’t even want to hurt _me_? I’m still evil, you know.”

    He sighed. “It’s complicated,” he said. “I no longer feel pleasure at causing actual harm. I mean, I’m still a vamp, I still like to fight, I’m always gonna be a bad man. I’m probably still bloody kinky. But hurting someone isn’t necessarily harming them. It’s just a lot more three dimensional now.”

    “And that’s why you wouldn’t trade it?” she asked. “Three dimensions?”

    “Pretty much,” he said. “I’d have gotten rid of it in a non-existent heartbeat at first. But not now.”

    “Why not?”

    He paused again, and his voice went pained. “Her.”

    Harmony loved the look in his eyes. She didn’t know why – she knew she should be jealous – but it was beautiful. “Tell me about her.”

    Spike rolled his eyes. “Harm–”

    “Look, I know you’re never gonna love me. But I don’t think anyone’s going to. Not the way you love her. I just wanna taste it. Even if it’s not mine, I wanna taste it.”

    The way she put it wouldn’t have made sense if either of them were human. The concept of tasting things, making them part of yourself, was almost uniquely vampire.

    “It’s the only kind of love I’m ever gonna get out of you,” she said softly. “Just tell me. Is she so beautiful?”

    Spike shook his head. “I wouldn’t care if she looked like a slugoff demon, not anymore,” he said. “Yeah, she’s beautiful. None of that matters, though. Not the moonlight in her hair, or way she moves, or her long fingers... her wrists... those full lips. Her eyes. No, I love her eyes. I just know I’d love her anyway, if she had none of those things anymore. Not that they don’t all drive me mad. Not that I... I still can’t keep my eyes off her if she’s in the same room. Not unless she’s looking at me. Then I’m just stripped bare, I often have to look away.”

    He sighed. “I mean her body is... starvation and feeding both. The touch of her hands... bloody electricity. And god, the heat of her. The passion when she opens her body. How _raw_ she can be. The strength of her against me... crush me to pieces, and her cruel claws, her naughty little teeth. The power of it. It’s like making love to god. Or death. Or life itself. The _scent_....” He almost groaned at the memory. “I melt at her scent. After she’s touched me, I’d find her scent on my clothes, my body, it was like Christmas. Just little... moments of pure joy that her scent was still clinging to me. It’s like being drunk. Or drowned, even.” Then he shook his head. “But that’s not it, either,” he said. “That’s just what she does to me, not what she is.”

    His eyes were very far away. “She’s power, and passion, and strength. And then she’s... kindness. Sacrifice. She is... everything unshakable and unquenchable and ungovernable... and yet I love her most when she falls. ‘Cause she’s human. Even with all that power, she’s so human, so alive, so real. When she lets herself open, and leaves herself vulnerable, and I can just curl her up beside me and shield her from the world. She doesn’t need me to do it – she’d stand up and face it anyway, and win. I know she would – even when she thinks she couldn’t. But when she lets me... lets me inside her. Not her body, but her self. Her soul. When she lets me lend my strength to hers.” He took a shaky breath. “It’s heaven.

    “That’s why I wouldn’t trade it away,” he said to her. “No matter the pain and the guilt and the madness, no matter the weight of it all. No matter what it took to get it, no matter what mistakes I made and all the years of confusion I blundered through before I finally did. And it’ll probably damn me to hell, but I wouldn’t even trade back for all those lives I took. Just one night inside her, her eyes locked on mine, the chance to touch her soul. To make the smallest sliver of my being part of her. One night. It’s worth all of it.” Then he smiled. “I had _three_.”

    Harmony gazed at him, wistful, deeply touched. “You’re a much deeper person than I am,” she said.

    Spike chuckled. “Life’s a lot simpler for you, Harmony. I highly recommend staying that way.”

    “Why won’t you go to her?” she said. “I don’t buy your reasoning. Blaze of glory and all that – that’s just stupid.”

    “I don’t really know,” Spike said, looking a little confused. “It’s like I can’t. Every time I make up my mind to find her... another doubt hits me. Another petty reason to stay. I kept fighting it ‘till tonight, trying to force myself.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m afraid of what she’ll do to me if I see her again.”

    “You think she’d be mad at you?”

    “No,” Spike said. “But she could tear me to pieces no matter what she did. If she turned me back into furniture, shunted me into the background again, I’d be devastated. But if she didn’t... if she took me back.... even the things I would give my eyes for. They feel so powerful they hurt.” He held up his right hand with the fingers spread, and then seemed to close it around something that wasn’t there. “Even her touch might burn me from the core.” He shook his head. “I can get so defensive around her, I need armor for no matter what she does to me. Then I hate myself for it, ‘cause what if she’d accept me, and I pushed her away. She draws me, and she terrifies me. I want to fall at her feet, and run a thousand miles away from her, both.” He sighed. “So. Tonight I’m here. That’s as far I can bring myself to plan.”

    She looked into his face, his soulful eyes fixed on a distant memory, so lost, so alone. “Turn me into her,” Harmony said.

    He looked down at her.

    “Close your eyes. Call me Buffy. Pretend I’m even the smallest shadow of all that,” she said. “I’ll stay quiet. Let me pretend I’m her.”

    “Harm...”

    “Even in a lie, I want to feel that,” she said. “From you.”

    Spike stared at her. “I can’t do this again,” he said gently.

    “Just tonight,” Harmony said. “I know you were just doing it. I know it was hard, I know it made you cry, but I also know you’re starving. It’s okay. You don’t have to swallow her name. I’d rather you played I was her.” She touched his hollow cheek. “I’m dead, and I’m soulless, and I’m happy enough. But I’ll never be near anything like this again. I love you, you know. I never stopped. Just let me play you love me, even as her. Then I’ll let you go.”

    Spike stared at her for a long time in the darkness, debating. Harmony reached up and closed his eyes for him. In the softest of whispers, so her voice was completely unrecognizable, she said his name. “Spike.”

    She felt him twitch beneath her. His breath came harder, and he trembled, ever so faintly. Then, taking hold of her head, he kissed her as if she were life itself. It was real, and powerful, and passionate, and desperate, and it took her completely.

    It was all a lie, she knew. Just as she knew she’d never feel anything so pure again.

   _“Buffy....”_


End file.
